Abandoned in a scrapyard, thousands of years in the future, Alita (Rosa Salazar) is found by cyber-doctor, Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz). Dr. Ido takes the unconscious cyborg Alita to his clinic and when Alita wakes up, she has no memory of who she is and doesn’t recognize the city she now finds herself in. As Alita learns to navigate the streets of Iron City, her new friend Hugo (Keean Johnson) helps her to trigger parts of her memory as well discovers she has a very unique fighting ability. It’s those abilities that those in power will stop at nothing to control.
One thing I love about a lot of recent science fiction films is that the creators of these films create the most visually amazing settings for their story. What’s tough about them is the stories aren’t as engaging as the setting. Which is what we have with Alita: Battle Angel.
Although there is some very good action throughout the film, everything else never captured my attention the way it should have. And even though I was really trying to pay close attention, most of the time I found myself lost with what they were talking about. Mostly when it came to when they were talking about certain individuals. Since everyone had these, not normal, names like Vector and Chiren, I often had no idea who they were talking about.
Unfortunately, as good as the action is in the film, it’s not enough to make me want to brave watching Alita again to figure it all out. That’s a shame because there is a top tier cast in this.
I take that Alita: Battle Angel is targeted towards a Young Adult audience, but I honestly don’t think there is enough appeal to that age group or any other age group that would make this film profitable to want to pursue the sequel that the ending sets up for.
Which means this could be a $200 million box office bomb.